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Colton Harris-Moore, better known as the "Barefoot Bandit," is disappointed that the news that he's sold his life-story rights to 20th Century Fox for $1.3 million didn't get out the way he intended.
Harris-Moore, whose fame as a fugitive owes as much to his ability to evade arrest during a spree of vehicle thefts and burglaries that stretched over two years and from the San Juan Islands of Washington State to the Caribbean as his ability to get messages out while he was on the run. His Facebook fan page currently has 23,142 members following the media-savvy fugitive, and while on the run he posted to Twitter to send out links to his own media coverage. Finally arrested last year after a high-speed boat chase in the Bahamas, Harris-Moore pleaded guilty in June to several federal charge last year and remains in custody in Seattle awaiting sentencing in October.
But he's not been idle. In addition to negotiating the deal with Fox for a movie they are developing with screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and director David Gordon Green, he also had a plan on how to get the news out. Lance Rosen, Harris-Moore's Seattle-based entertainment lawyer, said the deal has been done for about a month, but it was not announced because Harris-Moore was working on a statement that he would distribute as an exclusive to small papers covering the San Juan Islands where he grew up. Instead the deal was first reported on Wednesday in the Everett Herald, a neighboring paper, and the full statement has been posted on the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets, and the San Juan Islander lost its exclusive.